Books on Indian History and Culture: Authors and PYQs

The correct answer is C, Al-Biruni. Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, a Persian scholar from Khwarizm, came to India in the time of Mahmud of Ghazni in the early eleventh century, learnt Sanskrit, read Indian texts in the original and wrote the Kitab-ul-Hind, also called Tahqiq-i-Hind, a study of Indian religion, philosophy, astronomy, law and custom that is unusually free of contempt for what it describes. A is wrong because Al-Bukhari was a ninth century compiler of hadith in Central Asia and never wrote on India. B is wrong because Al-Khwarizmi was the mathematician whose name gives us the word algorithm and whose work carried Indian numerals into the Arab world, but he wrote no account of India. D is wrong because Al-Kindi was a philosopher of Baghdad, called the first of the Arab philosophers, who worked on Greek thought rather than on India.

The correct answer is C, Kannada. Kavirajamarga, written in the ninth century and attributed to the Rashtrakuta king Amoghavarsha the First, is a treatise on poetics and is the earliest surviving literary work in the Kannada language, which is why it is quoted in every question on the beginnings of regional literature. Amoghavarsha also ruled from Manyakheta and is credited with the Sanskrit work Prashnottara Ratnamalika. A is wrong because the earliest Tamil work of this kind is the Tolkappiyam, a grammar of a far older period. B is wrong because, although the Rashtrakutas patronised Sanskrit, the importance of Kavirajamarga lies precisely in its being in a regional language rather than in Sanskrit. D is wrong because Telugu literature is usually traced to Nannaya's version of the Mahabharata in the eleventh century, well after Amoghavarsha.

The correct answer is C, Hiuen Tsiang. The Chinese Buddhist monk Hiuen Tsang, whose name is also written Xuanzang, travelled in India during the reign of Harshavardhana in the seventh century, studied at Nalanda and recorded what he saw in the Si-yu-ki, the Records of the Western World, which remains the fullest description of India in that century. He is often called the Prince of Pilgrims. A is wrong because Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant of the thirteenth century who touched the south Indian coast on his way back from China and wrote his own book of travels. B is wrong because Fa-Hien came two centuries earlier, in the reign of Chandragupta the Second, and left a record of the Buddhist kingdoms. D is wrong because Abdur Razzaq was a Persian envoy who visited the Vijayanagara empire in the fifteenth century.

The correct answer is D, grammar. The Ashtadhyayi, which means eight chapters, is Panini's grammar of Sanskrit and the oldest surviving grammar of any Indian language; its roughly four thousand rules describe the language with a precision that modern linguists still study. Patanjali's Mahabhashya is the great commentary written on it. Historians also use it as evidence of society, because its examples name peoples, places and trades of its time. A is wrong because the classic texts on medicine are the Charaka Samhita and the Sushruta Samhita. B is wrong because law is the subject of the Dharmashastras, such as the Manusmriti and the later digests Mitakshara and Dayabhaga. C is wrong because the economy and statecraft are dealt with in Kautilya's Arthashastra, which is the option candidates most often confuse with this one.

The correct answer is D, Somadeva. The Kathasaritsagara, whose name means the ocean of the streams of story, was composed in Sanskrit verse in the eleventh century by Somadeva of Kashmir for the queen Suryavati, and it is a vast frame narrative drawing on the lost Brihatkatha of Gunadhya; the Vetala Panchavimshati, known in Hindi as Baital Pachisi, is part of it. A is wrong because Kalidasa wrote Abhijnanashakuntalam, Meghadutam, Raghuvamsham, Kumarasambhavam and Ritusamharam, but not this collection. B is wrong because Bhasa was an earlier dramatist whose plays include Swapnavasavadattam and Charudattam. C is wrong because Jayadeva, of the court of the Sena ruler Lakshmanasena in Bengal, wrote the Gita Govinda, the devotional poem on Radha and Krishna. All four are Sanskrit authors, which is what makes the question difficult.

The correct answer is C, Jaimini. The Mimamsa Sutra, also called the Purva Mimamsa Sutra, was composed by the sage Jaimini and is the founding text of the Mimamsa school, one of the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy; it is concerned with the correct interpretation of the ritual portions of the Vedas and with the authority of the Vedic word. A is wrong because Badarayana composed the Brahma Sutra, also called the Vedanta Sutra, which belongs to the Uttara Mimamsa or Vedanta school and is the usual distractor here because the two sutras are a pair. B is wrong because Charaka is associated with the Charaka Samhita, the classical text of Ayurvedic medicine. D is wrong because Panini wrote the Ashtadhyayi, a grammar, and his name is offered simply because he is the best known of the ancient sutra writers.

The correct answer is B, Kalhana. Kalhana composed the Rajatarangini, the river of kings, in Sanskrit verse in the twelfth century. It traces the rulers of Kashmir in sequence, weighs inscriptions, coins and earlier chronicles as evidence, and is therefore usually described as the first work of Indian historical writing in the modern sense. A is wrong because Banabhatta was the court poet of Harshavardhana and wrote the Harshacharita, a biography of that king, and Kadambari, a prose romance. C is wrong because Vishakhadatta wrote the play Mudrarakshasa, about the intrigues that brought Chandragupta Maurya to power with Chanakya's help. D is wrong because Jayadeva wrote the Gita Govinda in the court of Lakshmanasena of Bengal. All four are Sanskrit authors, so only the book-author pairing settles the answer.

The correct answer is C, Kautilya. Kautilya, also known as Chanakya and Vishnugupta, is credited with the Arthashastra, a manual in fifteen books covering administration, taxation, law, espionage, diplomacy and war, and traditionally linked with the rise of Chandragupta Maurya. The text was rediscovered and published in the early twentieth century by R. Shamasastry. A is wrong because Panini wrote the Ashtadhyayi, a grammar of Sanskrit, and the two titles are the pair examiners most often swap. B is wrong because Patanjali wrote the Mahabhashya, the commentary on Panini's grammar, and is separately associated with the Yoga Sutras. D is wrong because Megasthenes was the Greek ambassador sent by Seleucus Nicator to Chandragupta Maurya's court, and he wrote the Indica, an outsider's account rather than a manual of government.

The correct answer is B, A. L. Basham. Arthur Llewellyn Basham, a British historian of ancient India, published The Wonder That Was India in 1954 as a survey of Indian civilisation before the coming of the Muslims, and it remains one of the most widely read introductions to the subject; a companion second volume covering the medieval period was written by S. A. A. Rizvi. A is wrong because Romila Thapar wrote Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas and Early India, among other works on ancient India. C is wrong because R. S. Sharma wrote India's Ancient Past and the well-known studies of Indian feudalism and of material culture in early India. D is wrong because Ramachandra Guha wrote India After Gandhi, which deals with the republic after 1947, and a biography of Gandhi in two volumes.

The correct answer is B, Banabhatta. Banabhatta was the court poet of Harshavardhana of Kanauj in the seventh century, and his Harshacharita is a biography in ornate Sanskrit prose that is a major source for the reign, alongside the account left by the Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang. Bana also wrote Kadambari, one of the earliest novels in any language. A is wrong because Ashvaghosha, who lived in the court of Kanishka, wrote the Buddhacharita, a life of the Buddha, and Saundarananda. C is wrong because Bhasa was a dramatist of a much earlier period whose plays include Swapnavasavadattam. D is wrong because Dandin wrote the Dashakumaracharita and the Kavyadarsha, a work on poetics. Pairing each biographer with the ruler whose court he served is the quickest way to hold these names.

The correct answer is A, Bharata Muni. The Natyashastra, attributed to the sage Bharata, is the foundational text of Indian performing arts, covering the stage, acting, gesture, costume, music and above all the theory of rasa, the aesthetic flavours a performance should produce; every classical dance form traces its grammar to it. B is wrong because Abhinavagupta was the great Kashmiri philosopher and aesthete who wrote the Abhinavabharati, a commentary on the Natyashastra, not the work itself; a commentator is a standard distractor. C is wrong because Panini wrote the Ashtadhyayi, a grammar of language rather than of performance. D is wrong because Kalidasa was a dramatist and poet whose plays, such as Abhijnanashakuntalam, follow the rules the Natyashastra lays down, but he did not write the treatise.

The correct answer is B, Ramachandra Guha. India After Gandhi, published in 2007, is Ramachandra Guha's history of the Indian republic from independence onwards, covering partition, the integration of the princely states, the making of the Constitution, the wars, the Emergency and the economic changes that followed. A is wrong because Bipan Chandra wrote India's Struggle for Independence and India After Independence, the second of which covers similar ground but under a different title, which is what makes this option tempting. C is wrong because Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate in economics, wrote The Argumentative Indian, Development as Freedom and Poverty and Famines. D is wrong because Sunil Khilnani wrote The Idea of India and Incarnations, a set of fifty Indian lives. The safest way to keep these four apart is to tie each to one title: Bipan Chandra to the freedom struggle, Guha to the republic, Sen to argument and development, and Khilnani to the idea of the nation.